though it breathe the soul of romance, must yield, for sheer
effect, to his later soliloquy, spoken when the news of Juliet's
death is brought to him,


Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night.


And even the constellated glories of Paradise Lost are less moving
than the plain words wherein Samson forecasts his approaching end -


So much I feel my genial spirits droop,
My hopes all flat; Nature within me seems
In all her functions weary of herself;
My race of glory run and race of shame,
And I shall shortly be with them that rest.


Here are simple words raised to a higher power and animated with a
purer intention than they carry in ordinary life. It is this
unfailing note of sincerity, eloquent or laconic, that has made
poetry the teacher of prose. Phrases which, to all seeming, might
have been hit on by the first comer, are often cut away from their
poetical context and robbed of their musical value that they may be
transferred to the service of prose. They bring with them, down to
the valley, a wafted sense of some region of higher thought and
purer feeling. They bear, perhaps, no marks of curious diction to
know them by. Whence comes the irresistible pathos of the lines -